~ It's a matter of life and breath

Weekly Reader: Peace Bridge Saga–A Boy Named Terry Sues

War and Peace Bridge

Put to task

You can’t sue City Hall, but what about City Council? That’s exactly what we’re about to find out after a complaint is brought against this august body for ignoring its obligation to preservation.

You can’t do that!

Common Council Sued Over Trico Building

While the complaint filed against the Buffalo City Council does not specifically refer to the Peace Bridge neighborhood, it marks a milestone in oversight of local government. Terrence Robinson, preservationist and member of the City of Buffalo Preservation Board, holds the city accountable for its failure to landmark the Trico Plant No. 1 building on property coveted by the morbidly obese Buffalo Niagara Medical campus.

According to the complaint:

The city’s preservation code is in place to “preserve, protect, perpetuate and utilize landmarks, landmark sites, historic districts, neighborhoods, areas, places, buildings, structures and improvements which have a distinctive character or are of historic, aesthetic, architectural, archeological or cultural interest or value to this City, state or nation…Avoid demolition of historically or architecturally important properties and…Preserve the economic and architectural integrity of vacant or underutilized landmark properties by means of substantial rehabilitation and adaptive reuse,”

We are anxious to see how all this all plays out, especially in light of the horrible record of abuse in the historic Peace Bridge neighborhood. A favorable decision could set a powerful precedent in the long struggle to defend our Heritage against the callous and wholly unnecessary assault on it by politics and commerce.

The Last Word

Home (grown) Depot

Fort Erie Museum to host series of symposiums

As part of a series of symposiums, the Fort Erie, Ontario, Museum will present, ‘Archaeology Underfoot,’ an exhibition of ancient tools. This program will focus on the large collection of tools found at the Peace Bridge site and discussion of the importance of the local chert deposits for tool making here and recent research into the collection. The artifact based programs will allow the audience to get up close and personal with the objects and reveal their stories.

Fort Erie Museum Services houses over 1.4 million archaeological objects with the highlights of this collection on exhibit at Mewinzha, located in the atrium of the Buffalo and Fort Erie Peace Bridge Authority Building.

That’s right, the Peace Bridge is an acknowledged repository of archaeological artifacts.
Read about it here.

And read about the rich archaeological history on the Canadian side of the bridge here.

Care to guess how many artifacts have been unearthed on the U.S. side?

While you’re at it, tell us how many archaeological digs have occurred on the U.S. side of the bridge.